Feeding the Future – (Not so) Groundbreaking Sustainability

Intern Addison shows her preceptor the size of the sweet potatoes she dug up by hand.

I had the opportunity to get my hands dirty while interning with the University of Maryland’s Farm-to-Table program. Out in rural Maryland, bordered on one side by a county highway and the Patuxent River on the other, a small team of farmers grow thousands of pounds of produce that regularly make their way to the dining facilities on campus. When I arrived for my day on the farm, I was greeted by a cool morning and the promise of a decent sunburn without the autumn clouds. But it reminded me of days spent helping my mother in the garden, or laboring over my own plot in the community garden at UC Davis across the country. 

Tasks for the day: haul some hay bales from campus, review the history of Terp Farm, and end it with digging up some sweet potatoes. I brought my gardening gloves, prepared to return home with broken nails and hundreds of potatoes unearthed. To reconnect with my food and the soil it grows in. It was listed as the ‘sustainability’ rotation, but I couldn’t quite connect with what that meant until I saw for myself.

As dense as the environmental science lectures were at UC Davis, when the lead farmer began explaining the role of crop rotation to keep up the integrity of the soil, I was able to keep up. While digging up sweet potatoes, he reminded me about soil fertility and the conditions necessary to grow different plants. Sweet potatoes, fortunately, are not too picky when it comes to soil, as long as it’s a sandy loam that receives regular irrigation. That disregard for fertile soil won’t stop the farmers from digging up the spuds, leaving the vines to decompose in the sun, and planting biennials like clover to return nutrients into the soil. Future crops will need it.

Nutrients deplete over time in a plot when similar crops remain on the land, soaking up the stores in the soil. According to the USDA, switching out the crops for unrelated family groups and even planting with a nursery crop goes further than replenishing with compost or other soil transplant methods [1]. 

Terp Farm's compost pile is filled with squash and tomatoes in late summer and early autumn.

Lessons in farming equipment made me realize that sustainability also involves human labor. If a piece of equipment yields asset loss - for example, a plow slicing potatoes in half when digging up vines - is it more sustainable to continue using that equipment or revert to digging up the produce by hand? It depends on the scale of the operation. The number of people depending on that farm as a food source and the amount of time spent cultivating said food should be relatively equivalent in value. Even if the equipment is cutting assets, sustainable agriculture cannot afford to cut corners. 

Despite knowing this, I asked to dig up the vines with a spade rather than entirely by machinery. It took much longer to get a fraction of the product out of the ground, even if I was saving the planet some emissions. Time is also a factor - without adequate work staff, it becomes increasingly difficult to harvest product on time before it risks rotting in the ground. Terp Farm often has volunteers and student workers visiting to harvest the crops and sort them into bins before they head over to the university, but that is not always the case at smaller farms or in off-seasons. 

A tilled row of sweet potatoes and their vines, with a few scrapes and bruises on the root vegetable.

The results of the farm’s efforts are seen in the storage warehouse, tables, and pantry systems on campus. Three varieties of squash were distributed in the autumn months regularly to students and faculty that frequented the pantry. Recipes were quickly tailored to include roasted butternut squash soups, roasted acorn squashes, and spaghetti squash hash, to name a few. Adapting recipes to match supply is a responsible way to reduce food waste and quickly undertaken by the lead chefs on campus. 

Sustainability has many faces. People work towards green energy, plant-based diets, and do their best to shop local. Even the United Nations has 17 different goals that lead to a more sustainable 2030 [2] - but the most important takeaway is that we must care for our growing population without sacrificing the resources needed for future generations. It was a pleasure to see the University of Maryland doing their part in the food service industry.

1. Dufour R. Tipsheet: Crop Rotation in Organic Farming Systems. National Center for Appropriate Technology; 2015. https://www.ams.usda.gov/sites/default/files/media/Crop%20Rotation%20in%20Organic%20Farming%20Systems_FINAL.pdf

2. Department of Economic and Social Affairs. The 17 Goals. United Nations. Published 2023. https://sdgs.un.org/goals